Meet Sam Okyere, The Most Famous Black Man In South Korea

To many viewers in South Korea, Sam’s singing voice is hugely familiar. You can find him on some of the country’s most famous variety shows and he even has his own radio slot. He raps in English and South Korean, he is equally fluent in his native Ghanaian language Twi, French and Swahili.

Although he was born and raised in Ghana, he has recently become known as ‘the most famous black man of South Korea.’

Sam can hardly walk the streets of Seoul without being stopped by people asking for autographs.

“It’s crazy,” he explains. “There are times that I have to wear a hat and a mask. People from different age groups are coming up to me. I have got grandmas coming up to me, I’ve got babies coming up to me, young adults, high schoolers, people from different age ranges coming up to me asking for autographs. If somebody would have told me a couple of years ago that that would happen, I would have said: No, that’s not possible.”

Sam first set foot on Korean soil nine years ago. Back then he faced a totally different reality. Sam moved from Ghana to Korea as part of a scholarship to study computer engineering. In the beginning, life here wasn’t so easy.